


Gray and Lemon and Red

by an_atlas_of_clouds



Category: Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, i'd like to say it's fluff but, reincarnation au?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-12 06:26:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 14,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2098971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/an_atlas_of_clouds/pseuds/an_atlas_of_clouds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A head of lemon-blonde hair bobbed through the crowd, a violent dash of color grinding effortlessly against the iron curtain.  Alek kept his eyes on the woman as she strode into a small shop across the street.  He only had to wait a second before deciding to follow her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_ Nottingham, 2012 _

The suits, the scarves, the sky, the coffee, everything was gray and black and white.

Aleksandar of Hohenberg was making his way around the square, taking sporadic sips of his own bitter coffee.  It had already grown mostly cold.  He kept his eyes to the pavement, picking out the stains and cracks and wads of gum.  But, every once in a while, he would look up to survey the mess of people winding around him.  They all wore dull, tired masks, either staring straight ahead or keeping their attention locked to the phones between their stiff fingers. 

The boy shuddered and tightened his own scarf as a gust of wind blasted his unruly hair into a mess on top of his head.   _Mein Gott,_ what was taking Volger?  Surely the queue mustn’t be that long.  Alek had been waiting in front of Nottingham Station long enough to go buy his cheap espresso in the café next door.

Now, he had strayed from the station to go explore the square nearby.  For whatever reason, he had always enjoyed observing people.  They reminded him of the machines he had tinkered with when he still had a home; one ingenious design made of so many moving parts.  Sometimes it was dreadfully easy to pick out their broken cogs and cranks, other times he found himself tailing people all the way down the street to wheedle a diagnosis from between their fingers.

Alek had paused in his pacing to settle against a stone pillar, which provided a good view of all passerby.

The Man with Scuffed Shoes was a tuft of mussed hair, uneven shadows, and wrinkled clothing. Last night must have been one of many consecutive late nights at the pub.

The Woman with the Red Handbag was clutching her misshapen Mulberry (bulging with personal belongings, most likely), and her makeup was smeared from a frantic parting kiss. Bad breakup.  Or successful one night stand.

And the Man in Hand-Me-Down Clothing: his clothes were at least two sizes too big, but his hair was neatly trimmed.  He nearly jumped out of his skin when a group of children charged through a shop door and slammed it behind them. Soldier.

Gray. Gray. Plain. Boring.

The Woman with—pause.

A head of lemon-blonde hair bobbed through the crowd, a violent dash of color grinding effortlessly against the iron curtain.  Alek kept his eyes on the woman as she strode into a small shop across the street.  He only had to wait a second before deciding to follow her.

Once inside, the bookstore proved to be uncomfortably cramped and musty, books jutting out of shelves and spilling across the floor. Alek found himself reaching out and running his hands along the books’ spines, making an effort to straighten them while craning his neck to read their titles as he went.  He didn’t recognize any of them.  The whole time, he kept the Woman with Lemon Hair within his sights, trying to observe without being observed.  His gaze lingered on her longer than it should have—there was something different about her, a Something other than her clothing or her hair that made her stand out, which was something few could do.

She was dressed in a freshly pressed uniform, but her blouse bore no logo or insignia of any kind.  Her shoes were spotlessly shined and her symmetrical hair barely skimmed her shoulders.  Her face was pointed and worn with exhaustion, but her eyes were bright as they skimmed along the shelves.  Over her fingers she twirled a red pen, but her hands were stained with something that resembled graphite.  She had no real reason to be here, especially at 10:37 A.M. on a workday, but here she was.  Daring another quick glance, he confirmed that her hair was quite a brilliant shade of yellow—he wondered if she smelled like lemons, too.  He shook off the ridiculous notion and looked at his shoes. He couldn’t get close enough to see the color of her eyes. Most likely green.

Lemon Girl bent over and plucked a book off a pile on the floor; Alek didn’t catch the title, but the book itself must have been more than a couple years old—the spine had been cracked repeatedly.  As she flicked through the pages, he saw that they were yellowed and torn.  He couldn’t possibly reason with why Lemon Girl had found that book to be worth her time, but the corner of her mouth tweaked up a smirk as she tucked the book firmly under her arm and moved on.

By now, Alek had considered talking to her, but what could he say?  He wasn’t even quite sure what he was still doing in this infernal shop—Volger would call an army to hunt him down before he’d let them miss the first train out of this insipid nightmare.  He had certainly wasted enough time following strangers.  Whatever happened in the next ten minutes would hardly ever matter at all—by this time tomorrow, he would be cozied up in some slimy backwater inn in the corners of Zurich, with a new name and a hideous jacket to match.  He threw back the rest of his godawful coffee and slid back towards the front of the store to dispose of the cup when another man strolled through the door.

Alek allowed himself a moment of surprise as the man passed him; for a moment, he could have sworn that Lemon Girl had doubled back and walked through the store again.  But no, this man was much different, but by only a little.  He had the same hair and same face, but more freckles and more height.  Alek immediately knighted him Lemon Boy—the two were obviously related, much to his relief.

No sooner had Lemon Boy disappeared around the corner did Alek hear an eruption of sound from the back of the shop.  The two were engaging in either a heated debate or rather eccentric conversation.  Alek found himself drifting back towards his spot on the other side of the bookshelf.  He knelt on a small pile of books and listened.  Their voices were nearly identical, the pitch jumping up and down and spiraling into the wall—one would hardly describe it as musical, which was kind of what he was expecting.  Their accents were distinctly Scottish, so of course he could hardly comprehend them.

“’E told me I have the day off because of what ‘appened, you bumrag!”

“You cannae jus be roamin’ round the streets,  _Deryn_!  I thought I ‘ad lost you,  _again_!”

“Well,  _Jaspert,_ I don’t remember a bloody bookstore being the settin’ of an ambush!”

“Alright, then who’s the stotter perching next to us?  He’s been following you for the past five minutes!”

_“What?”_

Alek understood enough that he seized up, panic icing his blood.  Something in the corner of his head, where most useless information resided, reminded him that mammals moving in the dark almost always froze up when suddenly placed under a bright light.  The shop around him was relatively well-lit, but the two fair-haired siblings rounding the corner were like a pair of screaming headlights.  He found that he couldn’t move.  

Alek glanced up to see two pairs of crossed arms, twin faces sharing an identical look of distaste.  Boy cracked his knuckles with a menacing smile, and Girl cocked her head to the side, not unlike an owl. The surprise had laced her words, but there wasn’t a speck of it in her eyes. Had she known he was there? Her sunshine strands tickled her chin; she shook the light from her face with a twinge of irritation. She spoke first.

“You  _can_  stand, can’t you?”

Alek scrambled to his feet, hastily straightening his shirt.  “Y-yes, sorry, I was just, er…”

“You were stalking my wee little sister, you clart-ridden bum-rag,” said the Boy.  He leaped forward, and Alek fell back into another bookshelf.  A couple hardcovers slid forward and hit him on the head.  Lemon Boy remained in his gorilla stance, but Girl snorted (rather ungracefully) and held out a hand.

“You even fall like a girl, you ninny.  You some kinna posh prince or something?” 

Alek hesitated, glancing at her brother before taking her hand.  Instead of soft, girlish skin, her hands were stretched red and riddled with callouses. She hauled him up with ease, and he was briefly pulled close enough to smell her—definitely not lemons, but oh, her eyes were  _blue_.

Her voice cut rudely through his thoughts again.  “Aye, my name’s Deryn Sharp, if you haven’t heard already.  My brother here’s Jaspert.”

“H-hello, Deryn,” Alek stuttered.  “And. Um. Jaspert. I am Aleksandar v—er, Alek.  Just Alek.” Something about their names picked at the back of his head, especially when they came out of his own mouth, but in the same way the name of an old sandwich shop reminded you of that one time you got food poisoning, he dismissed it immediately.

Deryn raised a pale eyebrow.  “Alrighty then, Alek.  I’m pretty damn positive we haven’t met before. So, if I might ask, what in  _blazes_  were you followin’ me for?”

Alek had always been hopeless at lying, and he could feel his face redden with the effort.  “I—er, just wanted to…Yes.  Yes, I followed you.”  With a quick glance at Jaspert, he tried to say something clever that would dissipate the tension.  But, for some ungodly reason, the words just kept falling out of his mouth before he could stifle them, as if he were an infant.  “Well, I saw your hair first.  Then I saw your shirt and your shoes and I just wanted to know where you might be going.”

The silence hung between them for a solid five seconds after that. Quite a long time. Deryn was looking at him differently now; a mix of confusion and…pity. Alek didn’t dare meet Jaspert’s eyes.

Alek could feel his elation sinking back into his gut with a simmering shame.   _I need to say goodbye now,_ he told himself. Listening to a pair of bickering siblings from the floor of a shop treated his loneliness, even if only for a few minutes. But now he had ruined even that. They were both looking at him as if he were a leper. In his mind’s eye, the pair of them sunk back into all the gray. Just like everyone else.

He had to say goodbye, again.

How many more pathetic goodbyes like this would he have to give?

But the shop door said it for him. With the cling of a small bell and a distinct whoosh, Volger was behind him once more. A heavy pair of hands on his shoulders.

“There you are, Your Serene Highness,” his guardian growled in German. Alek didn’t flinch. He only watched as Deryn’s eyes flicked from his face to Volger’s. He wished that she could understand, but he hoped with all his heart that she’d never have to.  She wasn’t the kind of bird that looked good in a cage.

“Goodbye.” He said meekly, allowing himself to be steered towards the door, away from her. As the wind greeted his hair again, he heard a small goodbye from the corner of the bookstore.

Out in the street, Volger’s voice had a steely undercurrent. “I cannot believe you would do something so idiotic. After everything we’ve done to keep you safe.” He refused to take his hand off of Alek’s shoulder, as if the boy would swirl away on the wind like a piece of parchment.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Volger. We were only  _talking_. It’s not as painful as you make it out to be.”

“They are  _Ungeziefer_ , scuttling about this sewer of a place. You’ll only contract an illness from associating yourself with them.” 

Alek wormed his way out of his fencing master’s iron grip, twisting his face into one of disgust.

 _“Arschloch!”_  Alek muttered. A few people turned, and a mother radiated disapproval as she tugged her two wide-eyed, heavily-layered children in the opposite direction.

Volger sniffed and almost bit back with his own retort, but someone else’s voice bounced over the tops of heads and reached them.

“Wait! Alek, wait!”

Volger stiffened, fearing that they had been identified at last, but Alek recognized the accent, despite its tinge of urgency. He shooed Volger away with a wave of his hand and turned back towards Deryn, who had hurried, panting, to meet him in the middle of the street. He had just now noticed how much taller she was than him. It didn’t bother him in the slightest. He also noticed how she was slightly out of breath. This did bother him. In an odd way.

She opened her mouth several times, but a sentence refused to come forth. She then tried to tell him with her eyes, but there was too much, too much. Instead, she held out the book she had folded in her arms. It was the one he had seen her pick up earlier. The wind blew open the flimsy cover and skimmed through the pages. Alek caught a glimpse of complex illustrations and messy handwriting.

“Here,” Deryn said, her voice sounding as confused as Alek felt. “I’ve already paid fer it. Please, take it.”

As the book passed from her hands to his own, Alek witnessed Deryn erupt into color again before him. She shined from her hair to her shoes. That Something, the Something that had led him to her—he found it in her eyes. He could see an entire world in that blue, something that they had shared together once but could never remember. An open sky, a deep sea, and hundreds of beasts in between. Neither of them could place it, let alone say it aloud, but it was there. Deryn was trying to tell him but there aren’t any words for such a thing, not words that sounded reasonable outside of one’s own head, so she offered the book instead.

 “Deryn?” he whispered. It was like recognizing an old friend. Her words were carried away on the wind, so she answered him with a hand on his shoulder. It was lighter than Volger’s had been. He looked into both of her eyes, back and forth, left and right. Her left eye seemed to have a speck of green near the pupil. He watched it grow larger as Deryn waited for his answer. His words tumbled out again, but he didn’t care, he didn’t care. Everything was closing up again, the time was passing. He wanted to stay, but he had to go.

“Where can I see you again?”

Her chapped pale lips parted, but were frozen by the screaming of a train whistle. Instantly, another pair of hands was upon him. Volger was pulling him away with a determined jerk, and suddenly Klopp was hastening alongside them, brandishing a crinkled map.

He was drifting farther and farther away from her, until she vanished entirely among the crowd. Alek wanted to scream.

A few seconds later, he was being rushed up the platform and into a train compartment. He barely noticed as Klopp and Volger settled in next to him, both looking marginally more relaxed.

He loosened his stiff fingers as the train shifted into motion. He noticed he was still holding the book that Deryn had given him. Her message in a bottle.

He opened the book. It was a sketchbook, with detailed sketches of fantastical beasts and crisp, unfamiliar uniforms, with crudely scribbled notes flooding the margins. At first he was confused, but then Alek flipped to a page, almost skipping over it. It was close to the end, but the bright red had caught his eye. The words were smeared, as if the ink had still been drying when the book was abandoned, and he suddenly remembered the red pen his Lemon Girl had been fiddling with in the shop.

**_Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria, nube._ **

He recognized the Latin. He had seen it engraved on most of Volger’s belongings, as well as his own, but he had never bothered to ask what it meant.

“Volger?” Alek murmured, his brows drawing close together. He ignored Klopp’s frustrated mumblings, who had abandoned his map and was now trying to jam his large fingers on the keypad of a cellphone to get directions to their next stop. Without looking up, the boy asked, “The sentence you have engraved on those old sabers, the  _Bella gerant alii_  thing, what does it mean?”

He could feel his mentor scrutinizing him from across the compartment.  Finally, “It’s a motto, Aleksandar. From the Hapsburgs of Austria, one of the most powerful dynasties in ancient Europe.  It’s something along the lines of ‘Let others wage war, but you, lucky Austria, shall marry.’” He sniffed disapprovingly. “I distinctly remember covering the Hapsburgs in one of our lessons, young master. I’d at least expect you to remember the word ‘Austria’, seeing as that’s where most of your family is from.  _Was_  from, that is.”

Alek ignored the slight and continued to run his thumb over someone else’s words. Although that would be the last time for a long time Alek would speak to Deryn Sharp, he would wonder about her for the rest of his life.

 


	2. Lemon and Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The other woman extended her hand. “Lilit. I have someone who’d like to meet with you.”

_CitySpire Center, 2017_

The room was impossibly stuffy. Deryn shouldered her way through the mass of bodies and settled against the large window overlooking the tops of buildings on West 56th Street, letting the January air ooze through and cool her skin. She took a long swig of her champagne before setting the empty glass at her feet.

“Bloody hell,” she breathed, but her words were lost among the flowering arpeggios of the quartet.  She’d finally managed to worm away from a group of withering investors who had nearly turned her into Swiss cheese with all of their poking and prodding. _How much for this one? What sort of canvas do you normally use? Is your paint water-based or oil-based? I do hope you haven’t stored any of these in any kind of attic for very long -- I have a dust allergy, you see. Feel like bartering for that one, the one with the, er, flying jellyfish? Now, I_ know _that you want this one to go for at least $450, but, realistically, how ‘bout we settle for an even $400?_

Deryn finally blurted to direct all concerns to her “agent”, Newkirk, in the corner, who responded with a dull glare.

She stumbled towards the bathroom, quickly masking her haggard appearance as she pushed against the door. Too much damn noise.

When it was clear that she was alone, Deryn tore a paper towel from the dispenser and dabbed at the beads of sweat on her forehead. She straightened her navy dress, vainly attempted to pull it farther down as it rode up again. Reminded herself how much she fucking hated dresses. Wet her hands and ran her fingers through her recently-shorn hair, smoothed down flyaways and cautiously fanned under her arms. You need this, she told herself. You need this.

After a minute of meaningful looking-into-the-mirror, Deryn forced her breathing to even out. Upon exiting the bathroom, she very nearly walked right into an _incredibly beautiful woman_ who was leaning lazily against the lobby’s garish gilded mirror. Deryn saw her own reflected eyebrows jump with surprise, as well as the many ribbons and beads woven into the stranger’s braids. 

“Drink?” The woman offered her a fresh glass of champagne off of a passing waiter’s silver tray, and Deryn took it gratefully.

“God, yes, please.” She threw it back and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, suddenly incredibly conscious of her companion, who was still standing before her, examining her expectantly. “Er…sorry, is there something I can…?”

The other woman extended her hand. “Lilit. I have someone who’d like to meet with you.”

Deryn was used to patrons summoning her in unorthodox ways, but during a showcase of her own work?

In response to Deryn’s blank stare, Lilit clasped her hands together and continued, “I apologize. I’m afraid he’s gotten his hands on tonight’s guest list before I could talk him out of it. Loves your art.”

“I’m flattered, er, Lilit, but who is ‘he’?”

She only got a wide smile in return. “I could tell you, couldn’t I? But I’d much rather see the look on your face when you walk in completely unprepared. Coming?”

Deryn narrowed her eyes, but followed her escort around the edge of the lobby and down a different hallway, where tipsy couples were dozing and chatting softly. The pair took so many turns that Deryn soon lost track of where they were. When they finally arrived at a plain door, she was beginning to wonder who might be behind it. For a second, she seriously considered turning ‘round and running back the way she came, but something about Lilit’s demeanor and footwear told her that she wouldn’t get very far.

With a wink and a grin, Lilit opened the door and gently forced her inside, then closed it behind her and returned to the hallway. Deryn’s tired eyes searched the inside of the dim apartment. Someone was standing in the corner, just barely shrouded by the counter and kitchen cabinets. At the risk of becoming a full-blown cliché, Deryn took a small step forward. “Who is it?” she demanded of the shadows. Remembering that this was a dedicated patron, she cleared her throat and added, “Lilit told me you were interested in my work.”

“Not exactly. I was interested in you.” Oh, that voice. That voice cleared everything from her mind in an instant. It pulled her further into the room, and pulled its source from the darkness.

“Hello, Deryn.”

“Oh.” Her hands started to shake. Of course.

The boy’s face was a man’s face now; the fear in his eyes replaced with purpose, with fire. A void opened up inside of Deryn’s chest, the swirling, bottomless panic of years lost and thrown away. Hadn’t she seen him only yesterday? Last week?

Five years ago she had last seen Alek, his eyes, his long fingers grasping a book, the way his hair refused to stay still.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think my story’s pretty obvious: Promising young socialite fallen from grace, my rapid descent hastened by the gold in my pockets."

“It’s been a while.”

Deryn snorted endearingly. “Aye, I’d say.”

Alek turned away from the woman and hit the light switch at his shoulder, revealing a luxurious, untouched apartment, still smelling of varnish and Windex. All the furniture was low, as if reducing everything to below waist-height was out of a need for necessity and not fashion. A shag rug brushed up against a pleated, off-white Bridgewater sofa trapped between two mahogany end tables, upon each surface were the latest editions of TIME, placed surgically, in chronological order, next to a spotless Brookstone ionic smokeless ashtray and a stack of unused sandstone coasters.  Everything else was washed out in muted tones of brown and beige and black. The only standout features of the living room were the various oil paintings hanged in seemingly random, unfitting locations (chosen and placed by Lilit). A cheerful flame flickered in the gas fireplace, reflected in the massive window overlooking the five boroughs.

“I just arrived yesterday. Would you like something to drink? Something better than that brut champagne they were filling you with.”

There was a gentle release in the room as the tension dissolved between them, as if they were childhood friends and not complete strangers. Deryn joined him in the kitchen. “And am I to assume you have bottles of Dom Pérignon back there that are older than I am?”

Her accent was still familiar, if a touch more subtle than it had been in her youth, but he could hear the strain behind her words.   _Stupid_ , he thought of his own remarks. Too often he forgot the privilege that came with his family’s wealth, even when on the run. He faced her again with a crooked smile and two swirling glasses.

“Just an anonymous demi-sec.” He felt the tips of his ears redden as their hands brushed, but he pushed it away with a polite cough and a hurried combing of his fingers through his tangled auburn hair. No rings on her fingers. Her hair was shorter this time, blond, boyish, bright. Still no lemons.

He was once again reminded of how much shorter he was than her; suddenly feeling Volger’s phantom gaze at his shoulder, he kept his eyes on her freckled face and definitely did not sneak a glance at her tight-fitting dress or slender legs. He took a sip from his own glass to shut himself up before he voiced such thoughts, definitely not imagining how the sweet white wine would taste on Deryn’s lips.

Good God, man. Sure, he hadn’t gotten laid in a few months, but this was ridiculous.

“Lilit, erm, in the hallway, said that you came here because you found out about the showcase…”

He stared for a moment before he understood. “Oh. Oh, heavens, I didn’t follow you to New York. I’m no Gatsby. It was Lilit, actually. She was concerned about all the excess bodies going through the lobby. Makes it her business to know absolutely everything.” That last part held a touch more bitterness than he had intended, but Deryn must not have noticed; her wide eyes were still frozen on the 65.4 x 81.9 cm Cézanne duplicate over the media console.

_Stupid._

But again he was surprised by her smile, a reluctant little twist of the mouth that reassured him he was not mucking this up too badly. In fact, she seemed to be in as much of a daze as he was, for two wanderers to cross paths again, so disconcertingly intimate in the way they managed to forgo any kind of introduction or small talk that just to stand there together in shared space, at last, was enough.

She voiced his thoughts with a simple “Must have been fate” and reached across to pick a speck of lint off the shoulder of his sweater. The fire blazed on.

“So, ‘Just Alek,’ you want to tell me your whole life story before all my investors downstairs get bored and leave?”

His stomach plunged at her words. It had never occurred to him that Deryn Sharp could be one of the many people Volger had envisioned as The Enemy during his family’s plight. But in that moment, an odd feeling struck him, more reflex than logic: Could he trust her?

His thoughts were thrown into a jumble. He didn’t want her to leave, God no, but they _were_ still strangers, more or less. So he deflected. “I think my story’s pretty obvious: Promising young socialite fallen from grace, my rapid descent hastened by the gold in my pockets. What I want to know is how you came to showcasing your artwork at the CitySpire Center only five years after you hauled me off the floor of a bookstore in Nottingham.” He led her to the couch lightly by the elbow, where they sat facing each other, knees not quite touching.

*****

They started out small, with the past few months, family background, friends (Deryn led most of this half of the conversation, as Alek mentally cringed when he realized that Lilit was probably the only person he would definitively recognize as his friend within a 500-mile radius). He enjoyed the way she talked, how the ease gradually bled into her words, how her smiles came quicker and fuller, especially the way she’d grab his wrist to emphasize her point (“And I told Newkirk, I _told_ him, the knot was supposed to be a Bachmann, not a Munter hitch, but he jumped anyway”). He found himself grinning like a fool at the lilt of her accent and the eagerness with which she told him the freshest scandals of the NYC art community, of frauds and forgeries and even an attempted theft by someone she had wholeheartedly believed was, in her words, “a cannie lad”.

He listened somberly when her excitement ebbed away as she came upon the subject of her father’s tragic death (“Sometimes, when I lay on my back – anywhere, I don’t have to be in bed or nothin’ – I feel like I’m falling out of that basket all over again, and I can see the tip of his nose before the fire gets to it, then just. Fire. Everywhere fire”).

“My parents died, too.” He blurted out at one point. He no longer gave a damn if the wine made him careless with his words. “Just a few weeks before I met you. Car accident on the way back from a summit, the papers said, but someone had shot out their tires on a country road. Killed my father because their employer didn’t like what he had to say during the negotiations, killed my mother because she was next to him.” He didn’t look Deryn’s way; her dutiful silence kept his mouth running. “They must have had some sort of vendetta against my family’s involvement, because I was forced into hiding. Not that I’m much of a politician, and highly unlikely I’d ever want to become one now.”

Deryn clearly didn’t know how to reply, who would? So she just scooted closer and wrapped an arm around his neck, forcing him into a strangled half-hug. They stayed like that, for a while, even after the words had run out.

Eventually, Deryn remembered the showcase. More accurately, her phone buzzed with a frantic text from the infamous Newkirk: **i dnt care if u made Beautiful love to tht woman who was waiting 4 u outsde the bathroom, get ur skinny ass back down here NOW** along with the follow-up **im not even ur agent how am I suppsed to price these things**.

She let out a quiet stream of curses and leapt off the couch, jamming her feet back into her (somehow unfitting) pumps. Alek, after a hesitation, voiced his desire to accompany her.

“Might as well see what all the commotion is about. It’s about time I laid my eyes on an authentic Sharp work.”

*****

Lilit looked up from her phone as Alek pulled the door shut. He responded to her raised eyebrow with the most threatening glare he could muster. “We’re going to the showcase,” he told her. “And we’re taking the wine with us.”

She nodded and slipped her hands into her pockets, striding ahead of them. “Anything for you, _liebling_.”

Deryn shifted beside him, putting more space between the lips of their glasses. “Are you two…” she gestured back and forth between them.

Alek blushed, Lilit snorted. “Heavens, no. My family is…in his debt, and he needed a place to stay. He’s my responsibility for the next few months.”

“You might as well be my bodyguard,” he muttered into his glass.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I am, thank God. You wouldn’t be able to cross the street without me.”

Deryn took another sip, nearly draining her fourth glass. “And what happened to those heavily-mustachioed men on your heels?”

The other two grew quiet, and Alek grimaced, an old wound resurfacing. “Ernst Volger and Otto Klopp. Both dead. Years ago. They were the ones who got me out of sight after the thing with my parents.”

“Oh, shit,” was Deryn’s horrified reply. “Shit, I’m so sorry, Alek—“

“Don’t worry about it.”

Lilit turned to face them and continued walking backwards. “ _He_ should worry about it. The same person who took them out has been gunning for him this whole time.”

Deryn had slowed and fallen behind; not because of Lilit’s comment, Alek noticed, but because she had gotten a third text from (presumably) Newkirk. He couldn’t read its contents from where he was standing.

“Fuck,” She whispered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Before he could ask what was wrong, Deryn quickened her pace, almost enough to catch up with Lilit. “Remember that fuckin’ huddy I told you about, Fitzroy?” She asked breathlessly, fingers racing away on the phone’s touchscreen, wine glass sloshing precariously.

“Vividly, yes.” He recalled how red in the face she got when she described the man: greasy and loudmouthed, always slipping around on his father’s money. Chased after her for a while, but with each refusal he grew more and more persistent, up until she socked him in the jaw on the sidewalk outside her apartment (“How’s that for hard to get, ya fuckin’ minger!”). These exuberant tales had filled him with a strange, vicarious pride.

“Yeah, well, a little birdie told me that he just arrived ‘fashionably late’ to _my_ party, which _he_ wasn’t even _invited_ to, which goes without sayin'. He does this all the time, except now he’s badmouthing my work in front of a bunch of rich old dodders. Just what I need,” she added under her breath.

Lilit had overheard, and was now laughing with anticipatory glee. “Nothing like a nice upper-class squabble to get the blood pumping.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What the ruddy hell you doin’ here, Fish-roy? Don’t remember seeing your name on the guest list.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: contains a lot of shit-talking

The party was still going strong, or so it seemed to Alek, but dismay was written all over Deryn’s face.  He pried her now-empty wine glass from her fingers as she balanced precariously in her heels, searching frantically above the heads of the crowd, but Alek’s eyes were on the displays.

Hyperrealistic close-ups of rain, crying women, fruit flies; retro Technicolor prints of Vermeer’s _Girl with a Pearl Earring_ next to flowing, distressing landscapes of the Armageddon.  Clusters of pale partygoers, drifting in and out of existence in the fog of their own cigarette smoke, almost seemed like installments themselves.

It might’ve been a little cruel, but in the midst of Deryn’s crisis he found himself almost unnaturally calm, as if strengthened by the comparison.  He couldn’t remember the last time he was so relaxed surrounded by so many strangers.   _Anonymity._  He nodded to himself when the word floated past.  Was it his imagination, or was he beginning to feel the more adverse effects of the wine, tickling the back of his throat, making his nose twitch?  He couldn’t shake the feeling that a tiny sailboat was sloshing around in his head.  “At least the music’s decent.”

She whirled on him, her voice a frenzied whisper (a noble attempt, on her part, to remain civil in a crowd), “I don’t think you understand.  This showcase, all these fuckin’ dodders, this is the best shot I have at even coming _close_ to what you’ve got.  And fucking _Fitzroy_ is trying to take it away from me.  You’ve been on the run for half yer life, but somehow still have the money for a swanky flat and bottles of demi-sec to jam up yer arse.  Have you ever actually worked a day in yer life?”

Her accusation, though true, still stung.  “You’re drunk,” he said coldly, though he was just as intoxicated.  Where was Lilit?  All of this was going so terribly.

He heard her mutter “So what if I am” along with other unintelligible curses before she stormed away from him.  He grabbed her arm before she got too far.

“ _Verzeihung, bitte._ You’re right. _Es tut mir leid._ ”  He could hear the slur in his own words now, the fuzzy quality around everything.  The first few months after his parents died were like this.  Sneaking away from Volger or Klopp (if Klopp wasn’t the one to give him a few surreptitious swigs from his flask) to numb his mind so he didn’t have to think anymore, so he would stop replaying his mother's final words to him ("I have to go now, your father's giving me that look again, you know he doesn't like when I use my phone too long on these kinds of trips.  Safety reasons.  Anyway, remember, I love you, and yes, you can skip your fencing lesson today.  I've already emailed Volger.  Bye, now, _Bärchen_.")  Then, after a close call in Switzerland (three in the morning, deadened from the drink and the cold, found trudging through two-and-a-half feet of snow, yelling about bringing medical supplies to a dying whale, “She’s right there, why can’t you see her! She needs me!”) he decided that functionality took priority over mentality.

“Show me your work, Deryn.”

He watched as the anger in her face ebbed away, revealing an endless exhaustion.  She blinked and swayed on the spot, unsteady.  He tightened his grip and looped his arm through hers.

“That’s one of mine, over there,” she said, leaning in and pointing to a nearby canvas.

Alek stepped closer to get a better look, and the stem of his glass nearly slipped from his fingers.  “ _Mein Gott_ ,” he whispered.  A chill ran down his spine.

“What, that bad?”

“No, it’s…I’ve seen that before.”

“Well, yeah, my website –“

“No, I mean _I've seen that bef_ _ore._ ”

A rosy evening sky blended with buttery clouds; the only feature in the foreground was a horrifically beautiful jellyfish creature, its membrane bound by countless ropes and cables, outfitted with an iron cage of sorts.  Its tentacles trailed lazily behind in the sangfroid atmosphere, elegant and macabre.  The star of the painting, an empty leather harness, hung just below the creature’s underbelly.  A relic of a long-dead world, harmless yet ground-shaking.  It was eerily familiar, an image that would linger in his mind’s eye for the duration of the evening.

Before she could reply, the crowd on their left parted to reveal Lilit, a triumphant grin on her face, dragging another stumbling figure by the wrist.  “This the million-dollar man?”

The man wrenched himself from her grip and stood, flipping his greasy hair from his face with a violent flick of his head.  He clearly had made a half-assed attempt at dressing himself for the occasion, but had abandoned his cufflinks and tie.  His Brogues were outdated, Alek noted distantly, and hideous.  

Deryn, at least, recognized him.  “ _Fucking_ Fitzroy!”

His beady eyes swept over the crowd, some of whom had heard the outburst and were curiously skirting around the group, then locked onto Deryn.  Alek did not like the territorial way he was assessing her, and was about to say so when Lilit caught him by the elbow and steered him to the edge of the crowd.

“Trust me, _liebling_ , you need to let her handle this.”

Fitzroy spoke, ugly words spilling out in his distinct Yorkshire accent.  “Lookie here, the beautiful Deryn Sharp sheself.  That dress fits you in all the right places, navy is definitely your color.  Ooh, and the things those shoes can do to those legs of yours!”

“What the ruddy hell you doin’ here, Fish-roy?  Don’t remember seeing your name on the guest list.”

“Oh, don’t fret.  Just here for a visit.  Just wanted to pop up and say hello.  But,” he pointed past her, at Alek and Lilit, “When I came up here, and asked your mate Newkirk for you, so I could congratulate you, you know? he said you were off with those two for hours.  And I bet they aren’t on any list.”

Alek was caught between lunging forward and running away, but Lilit held him firmly in place.  Many people in the room were now staring; the rest hurriedly slinking away, like rats into the sewers.  The quartet had packed up shop with a twang of a viola string and a click of their instrument cases.  Newkirk had appeared on Lilit’s other side, greeting them both with a look of horror.

“So you can keep turning me away, leaving me out in the rain, _assaulting_ me,” Fitzroy said, pointing to a slightly-discolored blotch on his stubbly jaw, “But you’ll run off and readily have an orgy with complete strangers –“

“Enough,” Deryn hissed.  Her hands were visibly shaking.  The room was quickly emptying, but the (predominantly) young people who remained were recording the heated exchange on their phones.

But Fitzroy’s voice had risen to a shout.  “Is that how you really make your money, Deryn?  Because everyone knows your ‘art’ is just ripped-off Christian Lassen mixed with whatever crazy shite you have going on in your head!  All those years of cross-dressing and smoking your dead dad’s piss must have really fried your brain so much you’re willing to sell yourself to anyone on the street just to pay your rent!”

“Why don’t you go home and cry to your daddy about all the boys and girls who refuse to sit on your tiny little knob, you fucking swine!” Deryn’s accent had slipped into something dangerously unintelligible, and her face was reddening faster than a teakettle.  Her right hand made a motion similar to rolling up her sleeves, except she soon realized her dress didn’t have sleeves, so she stepped out of her heels and kicked them aside.

Her first punch, square-on and unforgiving, sent a strange nostalgic thrill through Alek, who was still frozen, dumbfounded, by how much he was in love with Deryn Sharp.

Fitzroy spit blood out of his mouth, splattering his front, then inclined his head toward Alek.  “Jesus Christ, she’s got a kick!  How much you pay for her?  At least it looks like you got the funds to afford this Sawney twig!”

At this, Lilit released her iron grip.  “Ah, fuck it,” she snarled.  She took both wine glasses from Alek’s hands and launched them at Fitzroy.  One of them connected with his shoulder and he stumbled back, howling in pain.

“I got no qualms with beating down bitches who deserve it,” He spat, turning her way, but Deryn intercepted him with a kick to the back of the shins.  He stumbled, spun around and socked her right in the nose.  She fell back, blood spurting.

The moment Alek saw Deryn’s head snap back in recoil, he abandoned all restraint and unleashed himself on the bastard, throwing punches into his stomach, nose, neck.  When Fitzroy fell to his knees, Alek kicked him.  When Fitzroy fell on his face, Alek kicked him.  The Prince of Hohenberg kept kicking him until he could hear people screaming and could feel familiar hands tugging on his arms, pulling him back.  His ears were ringing, but Newkirk’s terrified voice rang clear as a bell.

“I’ve called the cops on that head case. You two get Deryn out of here before she kills him.  Or you do, for that matter.  Holy shit…” The young man shook his head.  He cautiously stepped around Fitzroy’s prone form and hauled Deryn off the floor before depositing her into Alek’s arms (nearly knocking him over -- even without the heels, she was still taller than him).  “I’ll stick around and try to salvage what’s left of Miss Sharp’s employment opportunities.  Keep an eye on her, eh?”

Deryn, one arm around each of their shoulders, blinked back into existence.  She cleared blood from her airways with a hacking cough.  “So, did I win?”


	5. Chapter 5

“I think I’ll manage, thanks, ma.”

“Oh, come here.” He shifted towards her, cupping her chin with one hand and taking a wet cloth to her nose with the other.  She tried to worm away, but he tightened his grip.

“I’m not an infant who fell and brazed her knee, you dafty.  ‘M fine.”

“Yes, of course.  Do you routinely find yourself doused in blood?”

“Not as often as I’d like.”  Deryn groaned.  She closed her eyes against his touch.

“You sure you don’t want me to do that?”  Came Lilit’s deadpan from the corner.  “Seeing as, I don’t know, I’m actually certified to close such wounds with the aid of grown-up tools such as the surgical needle and the rubbing alcohol?”

Alek’s eyes left Deryn’s face for a moment to glare at Lilit.  “Don’t you have some Bovril you could heat up or something?”

“What, the meat tea?  That was _one_ time, and it was as disgusting as it sounds.”  At Alek’s insistent, unblinking stare, Lilit threw up her hands.  “Fine. Let her bleed to death. I’ll be in my room.”  And she left.

“You don’t have to be so mean, ya know.”  Alek’s eyes were on Deryn again.  The wine had flushed into her cheeks and into her words, though the excitement had sobered him up enough to give the police a coherent statement when they had turned up at his door.

“We’ve known each other for a long time.”

“And I’ve only known you for a few hours.  How come it doesn’t feel that way?”

“In my experience, asking as few questions as possible usually does the trick.”

The silence settled comfortably between them for a while.  Just as Alek had finally pulled the cloth away from her face and began unpeeling a band-aid from its plastic, he whispered, “Remember when we first met, Deryn?”  She gave a sleepy nod, eyes closed.  It felt strangely satisfying to say her name so softly, so slowly, like a cherry stem he once tried to roll into a knot over his tongue.  The fire cast dancing shadows across her angular face.  “How did you know what to write in that sketchbook?”

“ _Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube_ ,” She recited slowly, then smiled at him like a child who succeeded in remembering the full alphabet.  The phrase sounded beautiful on her tongue, even when slurred.  Alek never would have figured her for a sleepy drunk.  “What does it even mean?  The Latin was a wee bit much for me, and I’m way too jaked to google it.”

“I think it was first used by King Matthias in the 15th century, describing a handful of Hapsburg marriages.  ‘Let others wage war; you, happy Austria, shall marry.’  Something like that.”

“Something like that.”  She had leaned back into the couch, and was beginning to doze off between the cushions.  "How does it feel to be royalty, Your Princeliness?”

“Not as entertaining as The Princess Diaries movies make it seem, but more common these days than you might think.”

She hiccuped.  “If the Sharp family had our own swanky Latin motto, it’d probably be more along the lines of _bibo ergo sum_.”

 _I drink, therefore I am_.  Alek was thoroughly impressed, and the tiniest bit turned on.  “I’m sure you must be descended from some variety of crazy Scottish queen.  ‘ _Out, damn’d spot! Out, I say!_ ’”

“’ _Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?_ ’” Deryn murmured, and finally descended into the warm, sugary haze of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deryn and Alek were quoting Lady Macbeth, crazy Scottish queen, at the end there


	6. Chapter 6

Deryn had been raised rather well.  Keep your skirts straight, your nose clean, your laces tied.  When she was a wee little thing, she insisted to everyone in the kitchen that she’d never imbibe a drop of alcohol or any other funny grown-up drink, much to the amusement of her red-faced father and sniggering brother.  Her mother, dusted in flour, had brandished her rolling pin at the boys. “Not a word out of you two!  Just you wait, twenty years down the road she’ll be the only one of us on the straight-and-narrow, popping out wee monsters wearing trousers and all!”

Sometimes, when Deryn’s ma was out visiting Sherri up the street or bartering for fresh oysters and langoustines with the one-nostriled fisherman at the docks or whatever else mothers do during Saturday afternoons, her da had let her switch on the telly in the living room while he sat on the edge of the ottoman with a half-rusted army knife and carved wooden elephants that could curl up in the palm of her still-baby-soft hand.  The daytime programs were often cop shows or murder mysteries or even that one movie where Ewan McGregor does a lot of drugs and hallucinates a talking baby crawling around on the ceiling.  That scene must have made an appearance on the screen at least three times during the span of Deryn’s childhood, but her father always lunged for the remote and changed the channel before she could ask about it.  She always wondered why Ewan McGregor kept going back to the drugs if they only made him see the baby on the ceiling over and over again.

“Trust me, beastie.  You don’t wanna know.”

The conclusion: alcohol and drugs were life-destroying substances, employed only by those teetering on the edge of the loony bin.

But only after her father had disappeared forever into an all-consuming ball of fire that cloudless morning, on the grassy fields reserved for his special hot-air balloon rides, did she understand.  She downed an entire glass of whiskey (handed to her by a listless, ashen Jaspert) to drown out the smell of gasoline in her hair, on her fingers, on her tongue.

Years later, hundreds of miles away, she tried smoking for the first time while on the floor of her unfurnished Nottingham flat.  The money for such an unthinkable extravagance trickled in from waitressing (which she was just plain horrid at), modeling (for boys’ clothes, since her body was skinny enough and hair short enough), and family allowances (in the form of checks that Jaspert periodically slipped under her door, knowing that if he tried it in person she would just cram it back up his arse).  The space was just barely the size of her old room, but enough for a mattress and half a dozen canvasses.  The floor was littered with mugs: some filled with paint, some filled with murky paint water, and some filled with colorless, long-cold instant coffee.

Something was missing.  Something was always missing.  Sometimes, the hole that the missing thing had left in her heart swelled so big that her head buzzed; so many thoughts, too many thoughts, she felt like jumping through the window, or screaming till she was raw inside and out, or punching that ugly snaggletoothed doorman downstairs (who had seen her picture for the boys’ clothes in a magazine, and insisted on calling her Dylan), then the flick and _fwoop_ and crackle of a lit cigarette, and all of the ugly swirled away on the smoke, like shite down a toilet.

This had continued for two months.  Cigarettes were expensive, mind you, so she had used hers sparingly.  Jaspert checked up on her often, so she made sure she never smelled of them.

And then she had happened upon a rumpled boy with sad eyes in a bookstore who probably changed her life.  Everything had happened so quickly, but at the same time, it felt so calm and so planned and so _right_ , like that day could never have happened any other way.  Then he disappeared onto a train, and the missing something had changed into a missing someone.

She never planned on chasing him, of course, how fuckin’ daft, but some vital part of her soul was uprooted that day.  Something restless, and dangerous in its restlessness.  A week later her canvasses had been replaced by passports and suitcases (what’s Heathrow’s verdict on paint bottles in carry-ons?), train timetables for Nottingham and London, and printed-out apartment listings for New York City.

*

 “You’re looking better today.”

Deryn scowled at him over her coffee.  “Not feeling much better.”

“How come?”

“Well, though it was a hell of a first date, last night pretty much botched my chances at getting anyone to buy my work ever again.”

Alek choked on his eggs at the word _date_ , but he quickly recovered, wiping his mouth on a cloth napkin before folding it neatly on the table.  From what she could recall about his posh flat last night and what she had glimpsed earlier that morning, she had expected him to at least _appear_ visibly uncomfy in a dive like this for breakfast, but she was pleasantly surprised at how casually he leaned against his chair as he drank his coffee and picked at his eggs while she shoveled down her own.

The café was trying desperately to be modern and edgy: chipped concrete floors (cold to the touch), menus written on chalkboards, and a seemingly random assortment of chairs, all different sizes and makes, gathered around a peeling black coffee table.  The other half of the room, separated by a brick wall plastered with overlapping empty picture frames, was all slick linoleum tables and cracked leather chairs.  At least the oversized wool jumper (courtesy of Lilit, who took the liberty of replacing Deryn’s bloodstained dress as she slept) was warm.

Lilit had chosen a stool at the bar in the corner and was sipping a green lemonade infused with honey and mint, pretending not to listen in.  This early on a Sunday morning, when most of the upstanding citizens of New York were crammed into their houses of worship, the café had only a handful of patrons, which made Lilit’s job a touch easier.  Her eyes told Deryn that the only people of mild interest included a woman with a seeing-eye dog who did not seem to need it and a sullen teenage girl trying to convince herself to drink a cup of straight black coffee.

Alek had ordered some complex Konga pour-over whatever, and Deryn had just gestured his way (“What he said”) and added a poached egg and boiled potatoes to her order.  He _must_ have been through worse during his years on the run.  She suspected that Alek had insisted on going out for breakfast partly because he was literally incapable of procuring coffee, and because no one wanted anything to do with Lilit’s blasted meat tea.

  “Well,” he said carefully, “How would you feel if I…reached out to you for employment?”

She cocked a pale eyebrow, but raised her mug again to hide the confused twist of her mouth.  “Am I to be replacing Lilit or are we two-thirds the way to _Charlie’s Angels_?”

“I mean, I’ll buy all of them.  Your paintings.  And I want you to make more.  I have a network of patrons who would love to acquire them.  Perhaps if you did special commissions.”

She remained silent as a cyclist shuffled by, helmet under one arm and unlit cigarette between his teeth. 

“Deryn, I…” he grasped for the right words.  “I’ll give you a steady job, a steady pay.  I just need you to stay by my side.”

She kept her eyes down.  The mug was set on the tabletop with a civil _clink,_ but she picked up her silverware with shaky hands.  “Thank you, Alek, but…I can’t.  I can’t ask this of you.”

“I’m not asking, I’m giving –“

Almost dropped the knife.  Her fingers were itching for a cigarette.  “No.  No.  I want to do this myself.  I can’t have you… _providing_ for me.  I hardly know you.”

“You know that’s not true.”

Deryn stared at him, her brows suddenly heavy with unease.  Her eyes darted to the window, as if someone had their ear to the glass.  “You’re barking mad, you know that?”

Before he could answer, the linoleum vibrated.  Deryn glanced at her phone.  08:12. Sunday, January 22nd.  Newkirk (two British flag emojis, one eggplant emoji): **ok so abt last night: holy fuck m8.** She ignored it.

“No more talk of this charity shite till I finish my potatoes,” she said to Alek, then held up her fork menacingly when he tried arguing again.  “Ah, ah.  Drink your bean juice, Your Majesty.”

Her nerves settled a bit when the only sounds were clinking silverware ( **i’d like 2 revise my earlier accusation: was it the bloke u were making Beautiful love to?? Not the chick from Nikita?** ) and the fuzzy 90’s music drifting from the overhead speakers of the café ( **u dont have 2 answer that but I feel like we were dropped into a bourne identity movie or smtg** ) as the waitress made her rounds and refilled their mugs ( **ok no but seriously let me kno if ur ok no offense but u got ur ass handed 2 u last night and I havent seen or heard from u since** ) _Oh, for Christ’s sake,_ thought Deryn as she quickly tapped out a reply ( **patched up, pride wounded, eating breakfast with bloke and nikita, explain later** ) and tossed the phone into the seat beside her.


	7. Red

Nora turned her face towards the rising sun, letting the pleasant, albeit freezing, morning breeze blow stray hairs from a loosely-woven braid.  Some of the hairs were beginning to show gray at the roots, but today she had chosen to cover them with a black winter hat.  A cost-efficient diversion from the inevitable.  Under her arm she held the morning paper.  Beside her, a Greyhound flicked his ears at the wind and made several nervous circles before finally settling at her feet.

“I will have none of your complaining, Tazza.”  She half-pulled him into the café, where she met the sleepy-eyed waitress’s suddenly hostile glare with her usual defense.  “I am permitted a service dog.”  She gestured to Tazza’s bright blue vest.

The waitress and her clacking talonesque nails were impressed by neither the patron’s sophisticated accent nor the flea-mobile.  “What for?”

“I’m fairly sure you can’t legally interrogate me on my purpose of having a service dog.”

“And I’m fairly sure we’re fresh out of tables, ma’am.”

The café had 14 vacant tables, one of which was occupied by a withered old man who had either fallen asleep or died next to his arugula pesto.  The once-expensive leather seating was beginning to show signs of age, cracking unattractively as if the seat of the chair was about to burst.  Frosted glass chandeliers doubled as tableaus of countless fly corpses.  Nora decided that New York, if not charming, was certainly full of life’s little surprises.

“I’m colorblind.”

“Aren’t dogs colorblind too?”

“Two halves of a whole.  Could I speak with your manager, please?”

The waitress squeezed her eyes shut, as if expecting Nora to pop out of existence upon reopening them.  “Fine, fine, sorry.  Sit wherever you want.  I just don’t wanna clean up after that thing.”  She pointed to Tazza, who wagged his scrawny little tail in excitement.

So much trouble for a table, Nora imagined that at least the food would be bearable.  It was supposed to be, at least, especially if Aleksandar of Hohenberg found it suitable for his expensive tastes.

Half an hour and two cups of white ginger pear tea later, three more customers walked in, earning them a much warmer welcome from the waitress.  Regulars.  Nora leafed through the newspaper, doing her best to appear bored with its contents as one of the women scanned the room before allowing the rest of her party to sit at their table.  She nudged Tazza to attention with her toe.  The dog reluctantly abandoned his croissant, stood, sniffed the air a few times, looked over his shoulder, and returned to his croissant.

“Oh, you are useless,” Nora said, scratching his head lovingly.

Soon after, she returned her attention to the party of three.  Lilit, oh Lilit.  The Armenian was from a family of revolutionaries who came from several drastically different rungs of the social ladder, all involved with high-class scandals hopelessly entangled with the untimely fate of the Hohenberg family.  The most recent generations had absconded to New York to escape the limelight, but their sense of loyalty to their shambled alliances did not seem to have faltered much.  Nora had known about her involvement for a while now, but Lilit would still prove to be quite the obstacle.

The second woman was new.  Around their age, blonde, decidedly tomboyish.  Fresh bruises and vague familiarity.  Perhaps she could hold her own in a barfight, but fists rarely stop bullets.  Sticky.

The blonde was sitting very close to Aleksandar of Hohenberg.  Nora took another sip of her tea, bemused.  _Quite_ sticky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i may have gotten impatient and posted everything i had written at the moment. i'm pretty sporadic with updates anyway but it may be a while before i post any new chapters ;) :) ;) ~


	8. Chapter 8

Alek and Lilit had insisted on taking Deryn back to her apartment after breakfast, just to be sure Fitzroy or one of his cronies hadn’t followed her to repay her for the demolition derby of last night.  Lilit had sullenly agreed to keep watch from the hardware store across the street, but not until she had slipped a gilded switchblade into Alek’s coat pocket.  _If she asks, just tell her you’re happy to see her._

Now, Deryn shouldered her way through the door and asked him to wait at the threshold as she ducked in for an emergency once-over.  Alek smiled to himself when he caught a glimpse of her hurriedly scooping up an armful of dirty laundry and dispensing it into a pile behind a Japanese changing screen.

Her apartment radiated her light through the blue paper lanterns strung over the desk and Scottish flag draped over the couch.  The Murphy bed folded into the wall next to the ironing board was completely obscured by an enormous canvas that bore an only half-complete masterpiece.  Something with fire, it looked like.  A jumble of sheets and rumpled pillows beneath the window overlooking the heavily-modified, illegally-occupied C-Squat building suggested where she really slept. 

There wasn’t a clean surface in sight: coffee tables and countertops littered with painting supplies, prescription pill bottles (systematically overturned), the past two years of National Geographic, pamphlets from museums and ticket stubs from theatres, recently-unrolled charts and maps held down by coffee mugs, Raspberry Snapple and Starbucks espresso mocha doubleshots.  On the mantle of the gas fireplace sat two cartons of unopened Marlboros, still wrapped in their plastic cocoons.

Out of the chaos leapt a beautiful, overfed black cat, whose glossy coat shimmered in the midmorning sun.  He perched himself on Deryn’s shoulder and purred a warm welcome as his tail curled around the back of her neck.

“He’s been doing that since he was a wee kit,” she giggled, turning and wincing as he dug his claws into her shoulder to maintain balance.

“What’s his name?”  Alek asked.

She frowned. “I dunno.  Could never come up with one.  I usually just yell ‘Cat’ when I feed him.”

Alek extended his hand to the cat’s mushroom-shaped nose.  The creature craned his neck towards the man with wide green eyes, readily rubbing up against his fingers.

“He must’ve been worried that I never came home last night,” she said softly, kissing the cat on the nose.  “And he must be hungry.  Kitchen’s this way,” she continued, leading him through the flat as if it wasn’t an open floor plan.

Alek opened the refrigerator as Deryn filled the floral teakettle with water.  Her diet seemed to consist solely of Ben & Jerry’s single-serve cartons.  The other half of the fridge was dedicated to cat food.  He chose one at random (Fancy Feline Beef and Cheddar Cheese Feast) and held it out to Deryn.

“Do you seriously only eat ice cream and this _Scheisse_?” He asked accusingly, hoping he hid his concern well enough.

She shook her head.  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, opening the cabinet next to her to reveal one potato and two boxes of cereal, both of them Lucky Charms.  She took the can from Alek and opened it with fumbling fingers before setting it at her feet.  The cat took the six-foot plunge to his overdue dinner, landing with a furry _hmpf_.

“So,” Alek ventured, “now that we’ve finished our breakfast, do you think we could discuss that ‘charity shite’ you were so vehemently against?”

Deryn exhaled through her nose, and the cat paused in eating to stare up at Alek.  “What is there to discuss?  You want me to follow you ‘round the world as your raffish, trigger-happy mistress?”

He didn’t want to admit how appealing that scenario _did_ sound to him.  “Well, I know that I’m not leaving you again.”

“But why did you leave the first time?  What are you running from?”

Alek paced the space between the counter and the fridge, hands behind his back.  Tell or not tell?  _She’s a stranger._   Tell.  “My family was old and rich but they invested their influence in the wrong people.  They chose the wrong side, and now their enemies are making sure they don’t make the same mistake again.”

Deryn coughed into her fist and pushed an invisible pair of glasses up the bridge of her slender nose.  “You keep saying ‘they’ instead of ‘we’.  How does this make you feel?”

He shot her a look, but continued.  “I was too young when it happened.  It started with my parents, of course.  My father was next in line for the inheritance.  The rest of my ‘family’ has only ever been a name that’s earned me a target slapped on my chest.  They got Klopp and Volger, too, because of it.  Now I’m on my own.  I’m afraid to stay anywhere too long, or get too comfortable.”  He pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger.  _A line must be drawn._   But he had long since overstepped it, wherever it was.  “Because one day I might wake up and find you and Lilit strung up beside me.”

But, surprisingly (how was it that he was still surprised by Deryn Sharp?), her smile was dangerous and unyielding.  “Has anyone ever told you that you have a flair for the dramatic?”  Alek’s resolve faltered under the heat of her gaze.  “You’re not the only kid who’s sat for days, waiting for a parent who’s never going to come home.  And since when have I ever let a man lay a finger on me without my consent?”

Alek wanted to return her smile.  It pained him how much he wanted her.  Beside him, arguing with him, running with him.  He was selfish for wanting to tear her away from her life.  It wouldn’t be charity, that much he knew.

They mulled about in silence until the shriek of the teakettle pierced their thoughts.

“What kinna tea you want, Your Majesty?”  She sighed, opening another cabinet that was stacked with tea boxes.  “Afraid I’m fresh out of Bovril.”

The cat mewled softly.

“Surprise me.” He replied.  He rested with his back to the edge of the counter and his palms splayed against the cold granite.

She paused for a moment.  “Close your eyes,” She said.  She was playing around, Alek knew, but the runaway in him was suspicious of the odd coloring of her tone.  But he obeyed.  After a few moments of kitchenly clinking, Alek felt her draw flush to his toes.  He fought to keep his breathing even as her breath tickled his nose.  He hoped she would attribute his rapidly reddening ears to the steaming tea between them.  His nerves got the best of him, though, and when he opened his eyes she drew back, dissipating the tension with a sly grin.  “Ginkgo,” she said quietly, slipping the mug into his hands.  “Supposed to boost memory.”

Alek blew the steam off the surface of the amber-colored tea.  “Unfortunately, there’s quite a bit I wish I could forget.”

Deryn chuckled as she meandered over to the couch with her own mug.  “Well, I have a drink for that too, but I generally don’t indulge until—” she craned her neck to check the clock on the floor next to the windowsill, “—well, depends on what kind of day I’m having.”

Once they had both settled comfortably into the spongy cushions, cross-legged and facing each other, Deryn wiggled her eyebrows.  “So, it’s German you’re always speaking, right?”

“ _Ja._   But I’m originally from Austria.  Our dialect differs slightly from Standard, but only with minor spellings and something about the inflection that makes us sound all nasally and obnoxiously rich.”

“Wow.  Never would’ve guessed,” Deryn said dryly.  “So, let me guess.  _Scheisse_ means…what, garbage?”

“Well, more specifically, ‘shit’.  We usually drop the ‘e’ on the end in times of great duress.”

She hummed thoughtfully as she raised her mug to her lips.  Alek did the same.  The warmth slid pleasantly down his throat.  “Is that what you were saying to Fitzroy while you were trying to kill him?”

Alek reddened again, and his fingers tightened around the rim of the mug.  He couldn’t remember saying anything at that point of the showcase.  Just a flurry of movement and blood.

“What’s something else you said… _Es tut mir leid?_ ”

“’I’m sorry for something’, or, um, ‘It’s my fault.’”

“Something tells me you say that one a lot.”

The next half hour swirled by as the mugs slowly emptied and the space between the two grew smaller.  There was laughter, and the tiniest bit of frustration, whenever Deryn failed magnificently at making her Northern tongue twist to meet the demands of German’s harsh consonants.  Alek even tried to mimic her Glaswegian accent at one point, which had made Deryn laugh so hard that the cat was scared from his perch on the back of the couch.

Eventually, Deryn set her mug on the coffee table.  He did the same, his stomach twisting nervously at the look on her face.  Their noses weren’t even a foot apart.  Would it be considered improper to count the freckles under her eyes?  He fought the urge to tuck a loose strand of hair out of her eyes.  Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea – “So, Alek.  How do you say “Kiss me” in your Austrian German?”

 _Don’t get too close.  She’ll sink back into all the gray, this I promise you.  Or she will get you killed.  Her pretty face won’t stop any bullet.  Choosing love has always been a grave miscalculation for your family.  Choose, Alek.  Loneliness or Death._  

Damn it all to hell. 

“ _Küss mich._ ”  He whispered.  And she did. 

Without hesitation, she leaned forward to close the distance between them, and pressed her lips to his.  Gentle as a sigh, slow as torture.  He stiffened at the contact, but she was insistent.  The breaking point washed over Alek when he tasted the lemony citrus tea still on her tongue. 

His mouth slated over hers with all the desperation and urgency that had been simmering under his skin for hours, for five years.  Alek shuddered as Deryn’s fingers snaked through his wind-tangled hair, and he reciprocated by gripping her chin sharply to bring her even closer to him.

He could feel her eyes examining his face, and he reluctantly drew back.  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have –”

Deryn shook her head, slack-mouthed and breathless. “Don’t you dare apologize.”  She grabbed his stupid scarf forcefully and pulled him against her once more.  It was a mess of tongue and teeth, but God, it felt _wonderful._   The weight of her in his arms lifted everything else from his shoulders, and something heated and powerful stirred in the pit of his stomach.  Deryn hummed pleasantly against his throat as Alek gradually eased himself over her, pushing her onto her back.  She twisted pleasurably underneath him as his hands traveled the length of her body, and any control Alek had hoped to have over the situation slipped rapidly from his grasp when she whimpered against his lips. 

As the kisses grew deeper and slower, tangible heat flowed between them, too much, too hot, and Deryn’s hands were at his chest, ripping off the scarf and unbuttoning his jacket and throwing it all to the ground.  Alek was afraid of removing her sweater without her consent, but that problem was soon remedied when she removed it herself.  The moment that the disrobing required for them to break the kiss was a moment too long.

His breathing grew heavy as her fingers trailed down his stomach.

Their hazy, taffy-colored moment was shattered by a phone call.  Deryn’s hands froze on Alek’s belt.  He closed his eyes and stretched his arm to the coffee table to pick up Deryn’s phone, which was buzzing in insistent little circles.  Her eyes widened with mischief when he showed her the screen.  Newkirk.  He held the phone out of her reach and pressed ‘answer’ with his thumb.

“She’s busy.” He said simply.  Then he hung up, gently placed the phone back on the table, and stifled Deryn’s laughter with more kisses.

Then Alek’s phone vibrated from his back pocket.  Deryn felt it first, since her hands were on or near the area, so she withdrew the culprit.  Lilit.

“Christ, we better answer this one.”  She cleared her throat and pressed ‘answer’ as well.  “ _Hallo?_ ” She asked in a deep voice, deeper than Alek could ever get.

He could hear his friend’s voice through the tinny speaker.  “I think I can guess what’s going on up there, but as much as I enjoy playing doorman, there’s someone Alek and I need to meet with.  It’s urgent.”

Deryn sighed and held the phone up to him.  “It’s for you.”

He rolled his eyes and held the phone up to his ear with one hand, and began gathering his discarded clothes with the other.  “You certainly have a knack for timing.”

“Zaven called me a few minutes ago.  It’s Nene.  She’s getting worse.  I need to see her.”

Alek wouldn’t even be in this country if it wasn’t for Lilit and her family.  Guilt crept back into his stomach.  He wanted to stay, but he had to go.  “I understand.  Do you want me to go with you?”

“Hate to tear you away from a good party, but I’d feel a lot better if you stayed where I could see you.”

He sighed.  “Okay.  Give me a minute.”  He hung up and turned back to Deryn, who had already thrown Lilit’s sweater back on.  Her mussed hair and red face pulled at his heart.  “It’s Lilit’s grandmother.  She’s ill.”

To his immense relief, Deryn nodded.  “I know a thing or two about family crises.  We’ll pick up where we left off, aye?”

He knelt at her feet and kissed her hand.  “You have my word.”  He rested his head between her knees for a moment, pausing to take a breath.  God, he was tired.  “Oh, that reminds me.  Could I have your number?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah so. writing is really hard, but writing during the school year is Really Hard. please forgive me. i'll update as often as i can!

“I’ll see you soon, _im aghjiky_.”  Zaven hung up and finally let the phone fall from his bleeding hand, wincing when it clattered to the ground.  He couldn’t move his head, not with the muzzle of the assassin’s gun between his eyes.  Cold metal against shaking flesh.  A single tear slid down his cheek.  He should’ve just let the woman shoot him as soon as she kicked down the door.  “Why her?”  He asked, “Why my daughter?”

The woman actually answered him this time.  “It’s nothing personal, Mr. Ohanian.  Simply a means to an end.”  She wasn’t even looking at him; already turning away.  She was typing something into her phone with her free hand.  “And we thank you for your cooperation.”

The sound of her watchdog’s tail against his front door hastened the movement of her fingers.  She cleared her throat and slid her phone into her pocket, then whipped the pistol across Zaven’s face.  Light, blinding light, then nothing.  Less than nothing. 

He prayed for forgiveness as he watched his body crumple to the ground.


	10. Chapter 10

The rumbling of the train's starts and stops barely registered with Lilit as countless stations soared past.  Her hands were resting with curled fingers on her thighs, and she stared out of the grease-smudged window across from her with a carefully neutral expression.  Alek, bless him, knew not to disturb her; he was politely fiddling with his phone, adding a contact, sending a text, then instinctively checking email, missed calls, stocks.  He was the only person she knew who actually used the Stocks app.

It wasn't as if she hadn't gotten these kinds of calls before; Nene's health had been failing for years now.  She resided mostly at the hospital (under a different name, of course), but with bills racking up and diagnoses looking grim, there had been talk of taking her home, where she’d at least be comfortable.  Lilit had agreed, at the time, but after Zaven’s call, she had swayed between irritation – why hadn’t she been told? – and worry.  Any day might be the day. 

 _She might already be gone._   Lilit's chest tightened at the thought.  Not her, she reassured herself.  Going out quietly would be going against everything that woman stood for. 

The buzz of internal monologues continued.  _Focus._

Without moving her head, she re-counted the number of people in the train car, cross-checking them against the mental catalog she had made when she first sat down.  She shifted her left leg imperceptibly to check that the knife was still lodged safely in her boot.  A jolt from the train sent Alek's knee briefly against her own, confirming that he hadn't vanished into thin air.  She'd make about a dozen more mental rounds like these before the train arrived at their stop.

Alek's phone buzzed, and his face lit up as he tapped out a hasty response.  _The idiot's on top of the world,_ Lilit thought smugly.  One can only assume from this uncharacteristic break of composure that said idiot had recently reached second base.

She couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy as one of her own memories of foolish infatuation swam up to meet her.  She rolled her eyes at her ward.  "Hey, try not to look too thrilled that my grandmother's dying, yeah?"

He immediately fell back into his default expression of somber thoughtfulness.  "Sorry, Lilit."

She sighed through her nose to indicate her indifference.  Secretly, she admitted to herself that she much preferred cheery, head-in-the-clouds Alek to the melancholy runaway she dragged around the city.

_Focus…_

She slipped away again, and when she came back to herself she was marching up the stairs to Zaven’s apartment door, with Alek trailing behind.  It looked like any other brownstone on the street, except for that chip in the wood from Nene’s cane, and the scrubbed-away paint from when a teenage Lilit had tried her hand at graffiti. 

She tried the knob and found that it was locked.  This was problematic; her father always left the door open when she came by to visit.  She sighed again and drew her hair back with an elastic.  Then she took out the revolver.

Alek started at the sight of the thing, then gripped the railing tight with one hand, ensuring that he stayed out of her line of fire.

“Why – where did – ?” He stuttered.

She didn’t even look at him, instead checking the cylinder.  Nine rounds.  “I take my job seriously, Alek.  Especially when family is involved.”

Alek wasn’t following her train of thought.  “Couldn’t you just…I don’t know, knock?”

“My father and I have this sort of thing worked out,” She said quietly, spinning the chamber with her thumb to examine each of the bullets for tampering.  “You know I grew up among revolutionaries – the ones you would consider thugs – for whom paranoia was always a precaution.  Hushed meetings by candlelight, codes and ciphers on the sides of milk cartons and the soles of shoes.”

She clicked the chamber back into place, then drew back the hammer.  “This door's always unlocked when I’m due for a visit, because he knows I detest using keys – it takes too long to use one, gives an enemy plenty of time to ambush you on your front doorstep, etcetera.  If it’s locked, something’s wrong.”  Her years of training left no room for doubt; if she did turn out to be wrong, however, the worst case scenario would be she owed her father a new door.  Not much of a loss.

So she took a step back, raised the gun, pulled the trigger. 

But nothing happened. 

She cursed under her breath, jiggled the cylinder, and set her stance for a second go.

Then she shot the lock.  The wood of the door splintered, Alek yelped, and the bullet casing clattered onto her father’s welcome mat.  The recoil from the gun nearly sent the thing flying from her hand, and she squeezed her eyes shut as the spray of invisible gunpowder and wood flew up into her face.

Eight.

Alek’s head swiveled up and down the street, afraid someone had heard.  Someone certainly had, but by the time the police showed – if they were even called, which was doubtful in this neighborhood of immigrants – Lilit and her boy-king would be long gone.  Her ears weren’t ringing, but she had to shake her head a bit to regain her balance.  She threw her weight against the door, and it swung open with ease.

Second red flag: her childhood home was pitch black.  Curtains-drawn, pilot-light-in-the-fireplace black.  None of her cousins, big or small, crawled out of the woodwork to greet her.  Which meant no one was guarding her father.  The daylight from outside carved a path through the foyer, past the antique rug and potted fern.  Alek reached to push the door shut, but stayed firmly behind her.  She heard him try not to trip on the pile of Zaven’s shoes.  On the coffee table, a glass of what smelled like her father’s vermouth sat in the dark, next to the statue of Şahmaran.  In the glow of Lilit’s phone screen, a cluster of fruit flies floated on the surface of the drink.

Dread pooled in her stomach.  “Nene’s not here, is she?” She whispered.  It wasn’t a question.  Her gun came out again, and Alek left her side for the dining room, after which was the kitchen.  An unspoken agreement between the two – Zaven’s safety was now a priority.  Lilit started up the stairs, moving painfully slow lest the old wood creak under her weight.  The faces of her dead and disgraced family smiled out at her from photographs framed on the wall, but she didn’t dare meet their eyes, and she hadn’t in ages; she refused to feel guilty for being the one who lived.

At the top of the landing, there was perfect silence in that huge apartment.  Then:

“Lilit.”  Alek called weakly.  His voice was distant, in more ways than one.  Though every fiber of her being was pulling her back out the front door and into the street, any street, anywhere but here, she rejoined him in the kitchen.

Everything looked the way it should, except for the body of her father propped up in a chair in front of the oven.  He didn’t look hurt, save for the blood streaming down from his left temple.

But he was still alive.  His eyes opened, and something like recognition must have flickered in them, because what came next was a horrific, splattered cough, and he pitched forward from the chair.  Lilit cried out and rushed forward to catch him before he hit the ground again.  ‘Again,’ because there was already a small pool of blood a few feet away.  Had he even tried to fight?  Under her hands, her father’s shirt was darkening with blood from some unseen wound – it was coming in pulses; must have been a bullet that nicked an artery.  Alek was trying to help, but she pushed him away.  “You’ll make it worse.  Get the first aid kit under his desk.”  His footsteps retreated.

Information was coming to Lilit in the wrong order – her mind was too cluttered with frustration and numbing fear.  He forgot one of the lower buttons on his shirt, Alek’s shoes made bloody footprints on the floor where she played as a baby, now there’s blood everywhere, no, it’s only coming from his head now, from the temple, what kind of weapon, I don’t know, blunt object?  Who cares, he’s not dead, not yet.

Then, the obvious question, the only one she had the strength to give voice to: “Why did this happen?”

There’s never a why.  Try to do some first aid.  Her shirt wouldn’t tear the right way, but remembered Alek.  She walked to the office, but he wasn’t there.  In the foyer, the reopened door let in the frozen winter daylight that revealed the first aid kit lying on its side.  Alek had run. 

 _Coward._   She would’ve thought he’d have a stronger stomach for blood, after the things he'd done.

She’d hate him later; now, she picked up the bandages and went back into the kitchen, turning on the light with her elbow.  Zaven looked worse under the light.  She had seen him injured before, but this was...She tried to elevate him, but the blood was too slippery.  She could at least wrap the gauze around his head wounds, but she knew no good would come from digging inside him for the bullets.  Her vision was getting blurred from the tears in her eyes, but they couldn’t be tears, she never cried…Her phone’s in her hand, should she call 911?  No, she shook her head and called a medical contact, the same guy who always patched up the kids after a protest.  She didn’t remember what she said to him but she hung up about a minute later.  Help wouldn’t get here in time.  She murmured reassurances, but wasn’t sure if it was more for Zaven or herself.  She willed herself not to hear the death rattle building in his throat, but now it was the only sound in the house.

“Sorry, _hayrik_ ,” Lilit whispered, reaching out to hold Zaven’s hand.  She wasn’t ready for her dad to die. After spending his whole life fighting for the rights of their people, he bleeds out alone, on the floor, in the dark.  “Who did this to you?”

Who would have done this?  She sat back on her heels and started going through the mental files of individuals and families who were on their watchlist.  Could always be the police; if you want the union protests to stop, just take out the guy who organizes them.  Enemies after their family?  The Malones?  No, not their style, he’d be dead and a picture of his body would already be in the papers…Her head snapped up. 

_It’s not a hit, it’s a distraction._

She left Zaven on the kitchen floor and threw herself out into the cold, after Alek.  Her father would understand why she left in such a hurry.  Anyway, his pulse had stopped two minutes ago.


	11. Chapter 11

The jog from the station had kept the cold from piercing her down feather jacket, but now Nora’s face was glistening with sweat.  She paced in front of a convenience store, sweeping her hair up into a ponytail.  Both she and Tazza were panting, sending clouds of vapor into the air in front of them.

Her gloves, wet with a stranger’s blood, had to be deposited in a rubbish bin a couple blocks back; now her hands were cold and dry, and she cursed herself for not throwing a travel-sized bottle of lotion into her pocket that morning.  To be fair, her day had been going fairly without incident, and for that she was grateful.

Fairly without incident, yes, but her plan was quite an inefficient way to go about things.  The whole back-and-forth aspect bugged her to no end, but it was the only way to separate Aleksandar from his shadow.  Nora's plan hinged entirely upon the assumption that Lilit would take the boy with her after the call from her father, giving Nora plenty of wiggling room to think of a way to peel the prince away from his emotionally-incapacitated bodyguard once more, after she discovered the body.  

Well, Zaven could still be alive.  Depends on how quickly his daughter got there.

“It was all quite a spur-of-the-moment thing, wasn’t it,” she muttered to herself, making no effort to conceal her glee (but luckily, this was New York, and no one gave her a second glance).  Apparently, Ohanian was quite the busy man, and he was hardly ever home – it was his only place of vulnerability.  But a quick text from a blocked number – one of her ‘informants,’ if they could even be called that – let her know that the old man had sprained an ankle on his way back from a meeting, and would be cooped up inside his cozy brownstone, just for today.  It was exciting for Nora to be thinking on her feet again – she didn’t want to admit that her fingertips were buzzing with excitement, and not from the cold.  “Back-and-forth is more realistic, anyhow.  More believable.  Yes.”

A shame she had to go that far with Ohanian; she _had_ promised not to shoot him if he had stuck to English on the call, but he just couldn’t resist.  Before, she had read about his work with the Armenian unions, and had admired him for his insistence on nonviolence.  Didn’t do him much good in the end, though...It was almost funny, how easy it was.  People go on and on about having the biggest, baddest gun, but with something as simple and deceptive as charm, a woman like herself could slash her way through a congregation if she needed to.  But she wouldn’t need to.  Her only true grievance was with one man, the same man who had ruined her.  And she was getting closer to ruining him.

Nora knelt to retie her laces.  Nothing like a good jog to get the blood flowing.  The woman stretched her arms to the sky and crossed the street, ordering Tazza to sit outside with the doorman before she swung into Deryn Sharp’s apartment building.


End file.
